Ted Klein, a South Florida legal giant, died of a mysterious lung ailment that cut short his career as a federal magistrate judge U.S. Magistrate Theodore Klein, recognized as one of the sharpest legal minds in South Florida during a storied career as a federal prosecutor, defense attorney and judge, died Wednesday afternoon of a lung disease.
Klein, 66, died at South Miami Hospital after battling a mysterious lung ailment that family members say may have been caused by mold spores in his home. Klein, appointed as a magistrate nearly three years ago, fell ill last December and had been hospitalized since June.
His brother, Hank Klein, said the illness was a shock because Ted exercised regularly, ate healthy foods and never smoked.
''We don't know what caused this disease,'' said Klein, vice chairman of Codina Realty Services. ``He skied several times during the winter. He hiked during the summer. He jogged all the time. He was in excellent shape for a man of 66.''
Ted Klein was born in Czechoslovakia in 1940 during the Nazi occupation. His father, Rabbi Maurice Klein, and mother, Sara, fled their homeland with young Klein, then 9 months old, and his sister, Miriam, 4, eventually making their way to Lisbon. On May 15, 1941, the Kleins emigrated to the United States, settling with friends in the Cleveland area.
The family moved to Miami in 1957. At the University of Miami, Ted Klein was known as a bookworm. He graduated from the UM law school, where he was associate editor of the Law Review.
''He got the top grades in his class,'' said Donald Bierman, a UM law alumnus. He added that Klein was a ``compulsive preparer.''
Klein went on to earn a master's degree in law at Yale University. Then he returned to Miami and began to make his mark in the legal community.
In the late 1960s, Klein became a prosecutor with the U.S. attorney's office, working with Bierman and another friend from college, U.S. District Judge Jose Martinez.
Martinez said they would regularly go for lunch and talk about their cases -- and whatever struck their interest.
''One time, we were talking about mosquitoes, of all things,'' Martinez said. ``Ted went to the library and memorized the names of about 650 mosquitoes.''
During that period, Klein and his wife, Leslie, had two children -- Jennifer, a Yale history professor, and Andrew, a Miami psychologist. The couple later divorced.
''I've always been so proud of him and what he's done,'' Andrew Klein said. ``I've always looked up to him for everything. He had such a great sense of humor and was always able to give the support and guidance I needed to find my own direction.''
He said his father had that kind of impact on many people, including countless students he taught as a UM adjunct law professor for nearly 30 years.
UPHOLDING PRINCIPLE
Jennifer Klein praised both of her parents in her recent book,
For All These Rights: Business, Labor, and the Shaping of America's Public-Private Welfare State.
''I always saw my father as a person who stood up for what was right,'' she said.
She said he resigned from the Dade Heritage Trust because it met at Miami Beach's long-restrictive Bath Club. She also said he devoted much of his career to representing defendants because he viewed their right to counsel as vital to a democracy.
''He was committed to the notion that a democratic society had to have a strong defense bar,'' she said, citing her father's 1983 U.S. Supreme Court victory in a case of unreasonable search and seizure that dealt with police profiling of drug suspects at airports.
Klein spent most of his career at a prestigious Miami law firm, Fine Jacobson Schwartz Nash Block & England. He earned a reputation as a formidable defense lawyer in white-collar, healthcare and financial-fraud cases over more than two decades.
Klein almost became a federal judge after President Clinton nominated him in 1993. But his appointment was stalled by Congress.
When Fine Jacobson dissolved, Klein teamed up with Bierman and another longtime colleague, Ed Shohat, in their own firm.
In one of Klein's more memorable criminal cases, he and Bierman defended former Miami-Dade seaport director Carmen Lunetta, who was indicted along with two port businessmen on charges of stealing up to $1.5 million in public money.
After government prosecutors rested at trial, U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks expressed dismay over ''substantial evidence of greed and public corruption.'' But he directed a verdict of acquittal, saying the three defendants couldn't have stolen public money because it belonged to the private firm that ran the port's cranes.
In 2003, when there was an opening for a magistrate in Miami, Klein's name was at the top of the list. Sworn in that fall, Klein presided over arraignments, bond hearings and pretrial motions.
Klein was respected by both prosecutors and defense lawyers, who remembered him as a fair judge with a quick wit
.
`WITH A SMILE'
''As a defense lawyer and magistrate, he was always a pleasure to deal with, and he did it with a smile,'' said veteran prosecutor Dick Gregorie.
In addition to his son, daughter, mother, brother and former wife, Klein is survived by his fiancée, Donna Syrop, and a sister, Miriam Klein Kassenoff, a Holocaust educator in the Miami-Dade school system.
A funeral service is planned for 10 a.m. Friday at Temple Beth Am, 5950 N. Kendall Dr.
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